Five for Friday

Hi Peeps!

It's been a crazy few weeks, and while lots of learning has been going on, not a lot of picture taking as been going on!

It's nuts at how busy my class is keeping me-I often forget how far we come in a school year.

So, here is an update of what we've been working on - mostly anchor chart style. :)

First and foremast, the most important thing that has happened...

MY SHELVES WERE FIXED!! :D

Look at that beautiful gloriousessness! It's so pretty. It's so organized. I'm in love. :)

We've been spending some time talking about perseverance and how mistakes are okay.We've also been talking about how everyone is smart, but just in different ways. To go along with that, I recreated a chart I found on Pinterest.

We've also been learning about different ways to get along, and how we can start solving some of our own problems.

We've been focusing on sentences and meaning in writing.

Now for the biggie!

We've been spending a lot of time learning alllllll about reader responses and how to do them (as well as practicing them!). {Here are the posts I did last year, which is guiding my instruction this year. Post 1, Post 2}

We've just started learning about character traits, and have already learned about plot and setting.

We've covered a lot! We also been working on math-not to worry about that! We're almost done chapter 1, and will be starting chapter 2 soon.

Here's to the busyness of the beginning of the year starting to slow down soon!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Everyone's Smart

Well, I've successfully survived one week and two days with my kids!

Some of them are going to keep me on my toes, but I think I have a pretty good class (Even the toe keepers!)! :)

Each year, I always work  to build a classroom community/family (you can see how I do it through Responsive Classroom), and this year, I added in something that I learned from my Learn Like a Pirate book study.

Paul calls it Marble Theory, a way to show how everyone is smart, but we did it with base ten rods in my room (because I had enough for everyone, and they were already prepackaged in sets!)

Before we started, I had the kids brainstorm a list of things they could be 'smart' about.

Then, I passed our four cups, and a bag of 20 base ten rods to every student.

They needed to write two things they felt really 'smart' about, and two things they didn't feel as 'smart' about.

I showed them how to divided up their base tens blocks-more blocks go into the ones they are 'smart' about, with less blocks going into the 'not as smart' cups.

Once everyone had picked their things and divided up their rods, we took a gallery walk around the room, to see what they had. (And it was one of the quietest gallery walks ever! :)

Then, I had them come back and write the same thing for their cups (Reading & Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies) and had them reallocate their rods.

We took another gallery walk (another super quiet one!) to see our results.

After we had cleaned up, we talked about how different people have different levels of 'smarts' for everything that we do-but that we all had the same amount of smarts to start with.

We said it together a few times-we're all the same amount of smart-just in different ways. This led into my 'easy' discussion, how we don't use that words, because what one person finds easy, another one may find hard. That's because their 'smarts' are in a different area.

This then led into a discussion about even though it is hard, we need to keep trying and persevere, and change our mindset, and led to use starting this chart (which I pinned from Runde's Room, but came from Fieldcrest Elementary - please pin it from the source if you are going to pin it)
We're not quite done with the chart-we ran out of time-but we'll continue to work on it and it will be posted in our room to refer to.

So far, so good! I think the kids definitely enjoyed it, and hopefully we did an activity that I can refer back to all year long when we forget that we're all the same amount of smart.

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn

Monday Made It

I've been working hard on some things for my classroom-so picture overload warning ahead! :)

For my first made-it this week....


I customized my Target sign!

Since I like to set the rules with the kiddos, I wasn't a big fan of the follow the rules heading-but I liked the rest of it!

I thought I could make it better-and I did!

The first thing I did was to gather all of my tools.

Not pictured: The paint pens I used

Then I cut all the string off, so I could work with it easier.

and flipped over the arrow

and did a coat (or three!) of paint!

The paint is Martha Stewart's Craft Paint Pearl in Putting Green

Since I was changing what the arrow said, I also had to turn your into our for it to make more sense. I painted over that as well, and added an 's' with my paint pen.

 I was originally only going to do a few of the sayings in silver-but then I remember I had other colors {from years and years ago}, and thought it would look much cooler with other colors!

I did do 2-3 coats with the paint pens.

While the paint was drying, I went to my computer to type up what I wanted to put on the arrow-and brought it over so I could make sure that it would fit!

Now, I don't have a Silhouette or a Cameo or anything fancy like that-so I went old school.

Using a pencil!

I turned the paper over and rubbed my pencil of the back of the letters.

Then I flipped in over and 'centered' in on the arrow.

Then I took one of my smaller crochet hooks, flipped it over, and started 'tracing' the letters.

Since the back was covered in graphite, it left a faint impression-just enough for me to cover with my paint pen!

I slowly started tracing it with my paint pen, not wanting any paint explosions

But you know, accidents happen

Fortunately, it was an easy fix-just paint over it!

All better!

Once everything was dry, I started putting it back together.

I changed the top a little-I wanted a little bow on the top!

The best part-the follow the classroom rules is still there on the other side!

If I ever want to change it, I just have to cut the twine and fix it.

I love how it turned it!

Total cost for the project-$3-the cost of the sign-I had everything else!

I also completed my lesson planner for the next year! I had some hours to fill while waiting for my car to be fixed...

I changed how I did the calendars this year-which made it take longer!

Instead of doing a table and splitting the cells-I decided to do each date in circles!

It looks so cute! Since the days were so wonky with the dates as I had originally had them (I had a lot more Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays than I did Thursday, Friday, Saturdays), it was really throwing off the formatting.

Since I didn't really fill in the boxes the previous two years, I thought I could go with something smaller.

It also allowed me to add some extra clipart to each month-all fitting in with that month's theme of course!

I kept the format for the rest of the plans the same (I like to handwrite mine, and since things can change, I don't like having it typed out-I'm anal that way! ;)

I also added in the no school and PD days-helps me remember them {although, really, who forgets those days?!}

I've also started setting up my planning guide for the year. It will include curriculum maps, standards and helpful things for planning :)

Covers-I need to laminate them!

This is from the book Making Thinking Visible- a great read!

I also did two paintings! One was at the studio I normally go to, and the other was a surprise! My friend had tickets to do a paint nite with her daughter (the traveling one that goes to different restaurants), but her daughter had something to do at the last minute, so I got to go instead!

Studio Painting

Paint Nite Painting

I had fun with my friend (and we went out to dinner after), but I definitely prefer the studio painting experience-you get more colors and better instruction, as well as help if you need it.

Have a wonderful week!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn